Metamorphoses: Book VIII

by Ovid, A.S. Hollis

This useful school edition of Ovid's "Metamorphoses Book VIII", first published in the "Macmillan Modern School Classics" series in 1940, contains a short Introduction (covering Ovid's life, the "Metamorphoses" in general, the myths contained in "Book VIII", and a section on metre), the Latin text, detailed Notes on the text to aid translation, and a Vocabulary.

Genres: Poetry

210 pages, Paperback

First published October 24, 2008

About the author

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.

Reviews

[Nathan Jerpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this is, and shall forevermore remain, the first Latin book I ever finished.

I started this in January and "read" about an hour a day, where we take the verb "read" to mean:

-reading
-rereading
-looking up words
-trying to memorize the very words one has just looked up
-studying the notes
-scratching one's head

Book 8 of the Metamorphoses is about 900 lines, so overall I managed a pace of about 10 lines/hour. Glacial! Although when I started I was speeding along at only 5-6, and I think now I could muster 15+.

Reading Ovid in the original has helped me to better appreciate poetry written in English. In studying the Latin one is forced to *slow down* and formulate a separate thought concerning each and every word. It takes humility, and a certain reverence of words, to learn how to do this in one's native language. There is so much out there to read, why should any of us slow down? But Ovid has helped me to see why.

There are a few places where Gould & Whiteley have elided a few lines. I have learned that, in at least one case, this was because they were considered obscene.

[Anselm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually, I'm reading a Rolfe Humphries translation published by Indiana University, but I can't find it anywhere in these netparts. It's a great translation, and Humphries' translations of Virgil and Lucretius are also terrific. Unrhymed, ten-beat lines, amazingly fluid. I don't see any reason to come back to the 21st century......

[Brandon]

Pulchrum est.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun to read, not too hard to translate! Love how Ovid keeps making fun of epics.